Fictional epic: three years in the life of Ray Archer.

Archer portrays three years in the life of Ray Archer, a fictional Canadian actor/director dedicated to exploring performance styles with his diverse company. Following a Canada-wide tour of King Lear performed in mask, Archer takes his new epic history of Canada across the country and to Ireland, where a strange encounter changes his life in ways he could not imagine. Written in both modern and traditional poetic styles, Archer is Book Three of the epic trilogy On the River of Time, which examines three figures—one mythical (Odysseus), one historical (Edmund Spenser), and one fictional (Archer)—and the links between them across 3,000 years

Carl Hare in his long career has been a professor, actor, director, playwright, and poet. From the University of Alberta he won the Rutherford Gold Medal in English and later received an MA; he also has a Diploma in Acting from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He founded the University of Victoria's Theatre Department, was the Artistic Director of Company One Theatre, taught at the National Theatre School in Montreal, and was Chairman of the Drama Department at the University of Alberta. For the Canada Council he was the first Chair of the BC/Yukon Division of the Explorations Program. He served on the Board of the Dominion Drama Festival, and was a BC member of the Canadian Conference of the Arts and one of the founders of the National Screen Institute - Canada. In 2012 he won the Sterling Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatre in Edmonton. His most recent work includes performances of his play The Eagle and the Tiger and his adaptation of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman; the setting of six of his children's poems to music by Canadian composer Malcolm Forsyth; a commissioned poem for Forsyth's A Ballad of Canada, performed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra; and A Weathering of Years, a collection of poetry published in 2015.

Carl Hare's profile page

Archer — the character and the work — is a triumph ... What is perhaps most striking to me is how you managed to meld mask and contra mask, reality and fantasy, personalities and cultures, production and staging, leading us back to the Search by way of Lear and Odysseus, splitting open all kinds of mountains on the way.

Ann Saddlemyer